To wonder if you're one of the older members of a large family you ever stop and think

[PlayOnWurtz]

No more kids please mum and dad!

How much were you expected to do to support them?

I know Jed, I just think it shouldn't have been dignified with a response really.

The real clincher is it was recently a big birthday and we had the old photos out, because we had the same pram clothes my parents don't know who the baby photos are unless they have other siblings in.

I'm one of three and my mum did a photo album for my 40th, the baby photo was my sister not me - don't think this is unique to big families. I just found it funny, we had different hair colours as babies - looked totally different.

I think what this thread shows is most older children from big families don't like it and wish their parents hadn't had so many children.

It's probably not great to hear if you've decided to have a very very large family, but it cannot be a surprise that older siblings from big families feel they missed out on a significant part of their childhood. Frankly that should have been a huge consideration in choosing to have bucket loads of kids.

So many people bleating on about lack of attention and privacy...it is not your God given right to have your own suite of rooms and 6 hours of one on one time from each parent each day.

Wow, someone is defensive. What a hysterical post.

What about just wanting your own room or even own bed?
And having parents that had enough time away from the baby duties to listen to your problems or help with homework?

sparechange we all had our own beds your own room is absolutely not an entitlement. It's really not. Learning to share space with other people is quite important.

My parents both worked as well as bringing us up. I always had help with homework. I never felt they didn't have time to listen to me. People seem to think that baby duties and listening to older children are two completely incompatible things. I remember going into speak to my mum about bad days at school, she would sit me down and give me the baby/toddler to cuddle while we chatted about it. Nothing like a snuggle with a chubby little beast trying to give you sloppy kisses to cheer you up after a bad day. It doesn't have to be 5 minutes with child a, 5 minutes with child b, and so on. It's perfectly possible to combine these things and still make them all feel valued.

I have honestly never given any thought to how my life would be different if I had a different number of siblings. The thing is that none of us know for sure that if we had more siblings we would have felt less lonely or if we had less siblings we would have felt more loved. It's also worth bearing in mind that the idea of children having a childhood as we know it now is a very modern idea. You only have to go back a couple of generations for lots of families (I'm in my 40s and a two generations takes me back to the early 20th century) to get back to the days of children looking after younger siblings as a matter of course. I'm obviously not saying that is a good thing, but it is also not fair to say that no one had a happy childhood until this generation. People through the ages have had loving, caring parents and happy childhoods, just as people through the ages have had rubbish childhoods with neglectful parents.

I was the oldest of three and I had to look after my younger brothers it's not just large families that rely on older siblings to cut them some slack. I did not grudge helping and I think I'm a far more caring and considerate person now for it. It definitely cut my childhood short but I'm not sure it's the size more the parents that's the problem.

Sally those people on this thread who go on and on about how miserable their childhoods were and how their parents are to blame for every misfortune in their life, are surely more likely to have children who will grow up to say the same, because they are growing up in an environment where that's the norm.

My children will be encouraged to see that nobody's childhood was perfect, nobody's parents are perfect, but at some point adults must take responsibility for their own happiness and future if they want to move forward with their lives. I hope their perception of their childhood will at least be that their mother was a happy person and not moaning on forever about how hard done by she was not having her OWN ROOM from day 1 of her life. And that they were surrounded by a large and loving and happy extended family of aunts/uncles/cousins. I feel so lucky that my DC are loved by such an enormous crowd of people just by virtue of being born. And I hope and believe that so will they.

jed
You are projecting so much. Why so defensive?
What ever advantages you think you got from your family situation, empathy certainly wasn't one of them

Lucky you for having your own bed. Not everyone did.

And yes, sharing space is a good lesson to learn, but surely even you can see why children in busy noisy houses would want somewhere quiet to retreat to? To do homework, to clean yourself up after your first leaking period, to have a wank, to sob into your pillow after falling out with someone, to have soppy phone calls with a boyfriend, to be able to keep your clothes and toys and important possessions arranged as you like

You can surely see that having a lack of private space starts to undermine an awful lot of things which are pretty central to what a 'normal' childhood is. And why when you miss out on so, so many things that everyone else considers to be 'normal', you will resent your parents for it.

Although I get the distinct impression you are going to be one of those posters who says 'this isn't my experience therefore it doesn't happen to anyone, ever'

Jed, in my case as the oldest, just an occasional 'thank you' would have made a world of difference. I honestly cannot remember a single kind word from my parents in my teens, just more responsibility, expectation, and constant criticism. If you can't see the difference between that and having a god-given right to the moon on a stick (all the harder when most kids you know do indeed get that) then take your own misery elsewhere.

Good parenting is the difference between your story and mine, I'd agree with that, and extra children will add extra pressure on the majority of us who are merely adequate.

sparechange I think with 13 pages of people saying parents of large families are selfish and neglectful and their kids are miserable, I have the right to be defensive and say no, that's not the case for me, or for many people I know. Most people did have their own bed. I don't know anyone that didn't and I know a lot of big families.

I don't believe that a 'normal' childhood is defined by having somewhere private to go and have a wank. Maybe we have different priorities. But in any case

To do homework: anywhere, why does this need to be a private activity? to clean yourself up after your first leaking period: would think bathroom is the obvious place to do this
to have a wank: bedroom. Bathroom.
to sob into your pillow after falling out with someone: go ahead. If you want privacy, ask for it. If you don't, you have a sister to sob onto instead
to have soppy phone calls with a boyfriend: I imagine pre-mobile phones, we all had similar problems with keeping phone calls private, post-mobile phones...go and have your chat wherever you like
to be able to keep your clothes and toys and important possessions arranged as you like: bedroom.

Your brothers and sisters do not follow you around dogging your every move. You can go to the bathroom by yourself. Anyone who says they didn't have a single moment of privacy ever in 18 years is lying.

Have any adults said they enjoyed being part of a huge family?

Yes, Miss. I'm one of them.

MissMrsMsXX

A few have, but the vast majority on this thread, me included, did not enjoy being part of a huge family. DH is also from a big family and also disliked it a lot.

But it's ok, because Jed enjoyed it, all the rest of us are wrong, and our experiences are meaningless

As an adult, with adult siblings, I like that there are lots of us. We can spread the responsibilities of Christmas and gatherings and visiting grandparents between us all. We are all very close as adults and help each other out a lot.

But there is no escaping that we had a miserable childhood because there were more of us than there was time and money to go around
We missed out on huge chunks of what a normal childhood should have been. We have few memories of lovely childhood events. Our parents were always fraught, tired and stressed.

We got completely used to not being called by the correct name, and answering to whichever name was being yelled at us at that time.
We were used to never being able to do much in our bedrooms because they were shared, and sleeping arrangements would get shifted around when another baby turned up.

The only positive thing I can remember about having so many siblings was that most years, for the primary school nativity, one of them would be the actual live baby in the manger for the end scene. This felt like a small privilege when I was 10

sparechange, grow up love.

floweringderanger, I can absolutely see that it must be shit to never remember a single kind word from either of your parents, that sounds very depressing and I'm sorry you're in that situation, but as you say, I think that's down to their parenting rather than the number of children they had.

It needs to be a quiet activity. Quiet is often the first casualty of households with many children. My friend (oldest of 5) used to do her homework in the family car of an evening. In winter that was freezing cold and she had to use a torch - but it was quiet and had the added advantage that she wasn't being asked to help with washing up/washing/bathtime/bedtime as usual.

Sally sorry that you were an amorphous blob.

What I actually said was I hope they will look back and think they had a happy childhood, not 'they definitely will and that's all down to me'. I don't think it's 'having it both ways' to say I really hope my children look back on their childhood with happy and fond memories, but if they don't, I believe it's up to them to CHOOSE happiness for their future and not to spend the rest of their lives looking back and saying 'that's because my mother was a shitbag'.

Barbarian it doesn't NEED to be a quiet activity. I wonder how your friend coped in school if she couldn't work without people talking and dicking around. There's nothing wrong with getting used to noise and people talking around you while you work. Most people don't spend their working lives in a silent pod (or, one would hope, in a cold car with a torch). If you can cope with working in those environments, it doesn't need to be any different at home.

Actually both the people I know well, who have been brought up in large families, hate being the centre of attention.
The helping look after elderly parents is usually easier if you come from a large family. But sometimes it still ends up falling on one sibling.

She coped the same as me Jed - badly til we got into the O level sets and left all the dicking around wankers behind. I still need quiet (not silence) in which to concentrate. So do most people. Most offices environments reflect that.

Jed is never going to acknowledge that doing homework somewhere quiet is much easier, than trying to concentrate around kids playing.

it doesn't NEED to be a quiet activity. I wonder how your friend coped in school if she couldn't work without people talking and dicking around.

At school there's normally a mixture of group work, with chatting and noise, and silent work. There is a reason for this. There are plenty of types of work that most people find hard to do with distractions. There's also noise and noise: I can read happily in a coffee shop, with a constant low background noise, but not in a room where two people are having a conversation, or with the TV on. That's not at all unusual.